


Liminality

by what_alchemy



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Ableist Language, Drift Side Effects, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-22
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-19 01:57:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3591972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What we know, after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liminality

The Drift lingers.

Hermann knows things he shouldn’t, like Newton’s masturbatory habits at age fifteen, his rigid defecation schedule, and how he still tears up when he thinks about the pet chameleon who died when he was a child. Sometimes a stray thought or memory will skitter across Hermann’s brain and he will be somewhere he’s never been with people he’s never met. 

A warm father looks at him with pride in his eyes. A woman’s laughter in bed turns into sighs and groans. An undergraduate student older than he is fails in her attempt to flirt with him for a better grade. 

A man he loves sneers at him and tells him to get lost. His mother cannot be bothered to say goodbye before taking permanent leave of him. Grubby children crowd him into the toilets and shove his head into the water over and over until he cannot breathe, until he throws up, until he is too afraid and panicked to cry.

A jaeger pilot he wants to put his penis into is sharing beers with him and pressing ever closer, but his heart sinks and all the hops in his stomach roil when the pilot says, "Man, how do you stand it all day in there with Gottlieb? I mean, cripples give me the heebie jeebies anyway, but he’s such a superior little asshole on top of it. It’s amazing your dick still works."

"Dude," Newton says, because it is the only word that encompasses the miasma of shock and disgust that bursts through him now. "That superior little asshole is the only reason you even have a jaeger to rumble with, and you shouldn’t fuckin’ forget it.”

"Newt, man—"

"Actually I have to get up in the morning," Newton says, rising on wobbly legs to stagger to the door with the tatters of his dignity. "You meat heads need us cripples and dickless wonders just to put one foot in front of the other and all, so I can’t afford a hangover."

He is kinder to his lab mate the next day, and it lasts an entire hour before they’re screaming at each other again. But he never speaks to the pilot again, though he’s not enough of a prick to be glad when his jaeger goes down in the Pacific islands. 

Hermann occasionally wonders what parts of his life flit across Newton’s mind. Does he know, Hermann wonders, about which music Hermann can’t help but dance to in the privacy of his own quarters? Does he know how obsessive Hermann became over the unmarked stripe of skin on Newton’s belly that would peek out when Newton stretched? Does he know how ashamed and filthy Hermann felt when joining brains with Newton and the monsters sent to exterminate their planet made him feel less alone? 

Does he feel less and less like himself every day, and more like a man who is more whole for having touched Hermann’s mind?

But Hermann can’t quite bring himself to pick up his phone to call. Can’t open a new email or press send on any text message. Newton is half a world away and they haven’t spoken in a year, but he’s there like the pulse in Hermann’s chest: unobtrusive and undeniable. 

They are keeping each other’s secrets.


End file.
